I disagree that Ashkenazi Jews are only a culture. I'm not sure what anyone's distinction is between ethnic group and race, so I'm not going to waste time on that distinction, but clearly Ashkenazi Jews are an ethnic group, with certain recognizable genetic markers. 23andMe has demonstrated that much to many of us.
I disagree that Ashkenazi Jews are only a culture. I'm not sure what anyone's distinction is between ethnic group and race, so I'm not going to waste time on that distinction, but clearly Ashkenazi Jews are an ethnic group, with certain recognizable genetic markers. 23andMe has demonstrated that much to many of us.
There are, of course cultural components of being Jewish, as well. But I'm pretty sure that's not what 23andMe is measuring :-)
I was raised Episcopalian but three of my grandparents were Jewish and a genetic test said that I am 87% Ashkenazi. Most of my mother's family was very elderly and I only met them a few times and yet when I find myself among people of that, umm, ethnic group I feel a weird at-home feeling that cannot be based on upbringing. When I write music I find myself using Klezmer-like modes, and I have never even heard Klezmer until I ran across the late Irving Fields.
That is spooky. Klezmer is incomprehensible to me; I have never seen a mathematical definition for it. That it would come naturally to you without cultural exposure is fascinating.
I plant find the link I had to your music compositions. Now if like to listen to it again.
Modes are easiest to explain with the white keys on the piano. If you start tapping keys you will quickly learn that playing from C to the next C sounds "right"; do re mi fa so la ti do. This is Ionian mode, and pretty much all the music you have ever heard was based on it.
Now try playing from D to D; this is Dorian mode, and it's how blues musicians play. E to E, Phrygian, Japanese music. The others: F Lydian, G Mixolydian, A Aeolian (the Godfather theme), B Locrian, get you burned alive in the Middle Ages.
If you listen to my Strands (https://soundcloud.com/cheopys/warmed-over) piece, which is pretty atonal, there is one piece that climbs up and down a scale starting at 1:22; this is a mixture of Lydian and Mixolydian, on the white keys it would be C D E F♯ G A B♭ C. I have a sweet tooth for this stuff. It's too fast for the altered notes to leap out as you as "wrong."
Klezmer is not exactly one of these modes, it's a Middle Eastern sort of scale that starts with Phrygian (E to E) but has some augmented seconds, I think Hava Nagila is E F—G♯ A B C—D(♯?) E. I just played it, confirmed. The D can be either note.
I just noticed that the excellent Android "SmartChord" ap lists "Jewish modes"; Adonai Malakh, Ahaba Rabba, Magen Abot and Jewish I & II. Extra notes where I'm more inclined to leave some out. If you have an android device, you might like that ap. The unlimited version is too cheap to not purchase.
I like that music. The Lydian augmented 4 against the Mixolydian flat 7 is interesting. I've done next to nothing with Lydian. The continuous pitch change flow, without the noticeable note separation I'm accustomed to in your music is refreshing and new to me.
I am quite surprised that he numbers modes/scale in alphabetical order Dorian=2, rather than the more intuitive circle of 5th order Dorian=3 which makes modes and scales much easier to understand.
Thanks Chris. Very cool indeed. You caused me to investigate scales other than the ones I normally use. This might cause you to buy a cheap Android tablet and SmartChord unlimited ;0) The fretboard map at the bottom is for the instrument and tuning I have selected. You probably don't much care about that for electronic music, but the general music stuff you might find to be useful.
You'll hear Lydian once in a long while, I can think of a few rock songs that use it briefly. The chorus in Bowie's "TVC15," the first song in David Gilmour's first solo album, Ian Anderson seemed to discover Lydian on Passion Play; a few others. Blues is almost always Dorian, lowered 3rd and 7th.
I looked for that app on iOS, can't find it, both my Android phones died from expanding batteries.
One really interesting scale, six notes, comes from taking the arpeggios of two chords a tritone apart and combining the notes, like C and F♯:
C D♭ E♮ F♯ G♮ A♯
Some jazz players experiment with stuff like this.
I understand the "church modes" well enough. Your last paragraph might help me make sense of Klezimer modes which is the one I mentioned not understanding. I did already think that Middle Eastern music often sounds Phrygian to me. I'll look at what you wrote.
As an old-time banjo player Ionian, Mixolydian and Dorian with a modal variation are the modes most familiar to me. I am not formally educated in music, and I was recently wondering why Am is notated with one sharp as if it were G Major instead of C Major (no sharps), Same for songs in Em commonly notated with two sharps. I puzzled out the answer in the notes tab of this SS. Dorian minor, rather than Aeolian relative minor (C/Am, G/Em), etc. If I was a music major, I wouldn't have to puzzle out such things for myself.
I create spreadsheets like this to do my thinking about such things. I changed my mind about what I was doing with what started as a quick hack and I left a bunch of useless artifacts of that. I wouldn't leave it like that if I was on the job. The circle of 5ths became a comparison of scales and chords on a number of banjo tunings. Don't judge the slop too harshly please. You should be able to use the pull downs at cells S1 & S2 in the circle tab. You probably don't care about banjos. Banjo tunings are all about sympathetic ringing of open strings, thus the sus4 sawmill tuning for modal tunes. We've got a new (to us) banjo player who tunes to Double D for fiddle tunes in D (capoing for A) while I normally stay in Open G, so our chords are different inversions which is a good thing. He mostly finger picks while I down pick (clawhammer). We don't step all over each other that way. You can see that on the SS.
The African ancestor tunings are probably lost in time. Banjos are spiked lutes that commonly have a short drone string. Gut string fretless gourd banjos evolved to the thing that became a uniquely American instrument. I think that black Americans abandoned the instrument because of the racism associated with the minstrels, but I see a movement to bring it back to black Americans which I see as a good thing. Opps, I got started on banjos ;0)
Thanks for the link again. Atonal music is not something I've gotten into. Key changes up a 5th, like D to A are easier to accommodate in my mind since only one note sounds accidental if you don't realize what happened. The Chord changes are a tip-off.
It's my candy too. Apologies for everyone else.
I just added the Modes tab from another SS. You might like it while ignoring banjos.
Dorian minor is commonly used in old-time music and is the one I'm mostly familiar with. They taught natural (relative) minor in elementary school music class back in the day. I don't know if the even teach it there any more.
I disagree that Ashkenazi Jews are only a culture. I'm not sure what anyone's distinction is between ethnic group and race, so I'm not going to waste time on that distinction, but clearly Ashkenazi Jews are an ethnic group, with certain recognizable genetic markers. 23andMe has demonstrated that much to many of us.
There are, of course cultural components of being Jewish, as well. But I'm pretty sure that's not what 23andMe is measuring :-)
I was raised Episcopalian but three of my grandparents were Jewish and a genetic test said that I am 87% Ashkenazi. Most of my mother's family was very elderly and I only met them a few times and yet when I find myself among people of that, umm, ethnic group I feel a weird at-home feeling that cannot be based on upbringing. When I write music I find myself using Klezmer-like modes, and I have never even heard Klezmer until I ran across the late Irving Fields.
Spooky stuff. Lamarckian, almost.
That is spooky. Klezmer is incomprehensible to me; I have never seen a mathematical definition for it. That it would come naturally to you without cultural exposure is fascinating.
I plant find the link I had to your music compositions. Now if like to listen to it again.
Modes are easiest to explain with the white keys on the piano. If you start tapping keys you will quickly learn that playing from C to the next C sounds "right"; do re mi fa so la ti do. This is Ionian mode, and pretty much all the music you have ever heard was based on it.
Now try playing from D to D; this is Dorian mode, and it's how blues musicians play. E to E, Phrygian, Japanese music. The others: F Lydian, G Mixolydian, A Aeolian (the Godfather theme), B Locrian, get you burned alive in the Middle Ages.
If you listen to my Strands (https://soundcloud.com/cheopys/warmed-over) piece, which is pretty atonal, there is one piece that climbs up and down a scale starting at 1:22; this is a mixture of Lydian and Mixolydian, on the white keys it would be C D E F♯ G A B♭ C. I have a sweet tooth for this stuff. It's too fast for the altered notes to leap out as you as "wrong."
Klezmer is not exactly one of these modes, it's a Middle Eastern sort of scale that starts with Phrygian (E to E) but has some augmented seconds, I think Hava Nagila is E F—G♯ A B C—D(♯?) E. I just played it, confirmed. The D can be either note.
I love this stuff
I just noticed that the excellent Android "SmartChord" ap lists "Jewish modes"; Adonai Malakh, Ahaba Rabba, Magen Abot and Jewish I & II. Extra notes where I'm more inclined to leave some out. If you have an android device, you might like that ap. The unlimited version is too cheap to not purchase.
Apologies again to all for the tangent.
I like that music. The Lydian augmented 4 against the Mixolydian flat 7 is interesting. I've done next to nothing with Lydian. The continuous pitch change flow, without the noticeable note separation I'm accustomed to in your music is refreshing and new to me.
This is very cool:
https://producersociety.com/what-is-the-darkest-scale-double-harmonic-major/
Beato's video is worth the ten minutes.
And thanks for that pointing to this very good page.
https://producersociety.com/how-to-learn-music-theory-the-definitive-guide/
I am quite surprised that he numbers modes/scale in alphabetical order Dorian=2, rather than the more intuitive circle of 5th order Dorian=3 which makes modes and scales much easier to understand.
Thanks Chris. Very cool indeed. You caused me to investigate scales other than the ones I normally use. This might cause you to buy a cheap Android tablet and SmartChord unlimited ;0) The fretboard map at the bottom is for the instrument and tuning I have selected. You probably don't much care about that for electronic music, but the general music stuff you might find to be useful.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1iBYjopP7JCm-9WD7gva8ZIb1VFH79zSr/view?usp=sharing
I've been playing classical guitar since the mid 70s. I can use those scales. Yeah I can get a latest-model-but-one dirt cheap Android here.
We're hijacking Steve's thread to talk about music theory. Write me at cheopys@gmail.com and let's continue it there.
Right. Serry Steve.
You'll hear Lydian once in a long while, I can think of a few rock songs that use it briefly. The chorus in Bowie's "TVC15," the first song in David Gilmour's first solo album, Ian Anderson seemed to discover Lydian on Passion Play; a few others. Blues is almost always Dorian, lowered 3rd and 7th.
I looked for that app on iOS, can't find it, both my Android phones died from expanding batteries.
One really interesting scale, six notes, comes from taking the arpeggios of two chords a tritone apart and combining the notes, like C and F♯:
C D♭ E♮ F♯ G♮ A♯
Some jazz players experiment with stuff like this.
I actually wrote a Medium article that nobody read about the use of the black keys for the five anhemitonic pentatonic modes.
I understand the "church modes" well enough. Your last paragraph might help me make sense of Klezimer modes which is the one I mentioned not understanding. I did already think that Middle Eastern music often sounds Phrygian to me. I'll look at what you wrote.
As an old-time banjo player Ionian, Mixolydian and Dorian with a modal variation are the modes most familiar to me. I am not formally educated in music, and I was recently wondering why Am is notated with one sharp as if it were G Major instead of C Major (no sharps), Same for songs in Em commonly notated with two sharps. I puzzled out the answer in the notes tab of this SS. Dorian minor, rather than Aeolian relative minor (C/Am, G/Em), etc. If I was a music major, I wouldn't have to puzzle out such things for myself.
I create spreadsheets like this to do my thinking about such things. I changed my mind about what I was doing with what started as a quick hack and I left a bunch of useless artifacts of that. I wouldn't leave it like that if I was on the job. The circle of 5ths became a comparison of scales and chords on a number of banjo tunings. Don't judge the slop too harshly please. You should be able to use the pull downs at cells S1 & S2 in the circle tab. You probably don't care about banjos. Banjo tunings are all about sympathetic ringing of open strings, thus the sus4 sawmill tuning for modal tunes. We've got a new (to us) banjo player who tunes to Double D for fiddle tunes in D (capoing for A) while I normally stay in Open G, so our chords are different inversions which is a good thing. He mostly finger picks while I down pick (clawhammer). We don't step all over each other that way. You can see that on the SS.
The African ancestor tunings are probably lost in time. Banjos are spiked lutes that commonly have a short drone string. Gut string fretless gourd banjos evolved to the thing that became a uniquely American instrument. I think that black Americans abandoned the instrument because of the racism associated with the minstrels, but I see a movement to bring it back to black Americans which I see as a good thing. Opps, I got started on banjos ;0)
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1llUFDa0Qb_JQgpHw4uc9KCgKFbuwwVxUz6XDtTaEjKw/edit?usp=sharing
Thanks for the link again. Atonal music is not something I've gotten into. Key changes up a 5th, like D to A are easier to accommodate in my mind since only one note sounds accidental if you don't realize what happened. The Chord changes are a tip-off.
It's my candy too. Apologies for everyone else.
I just added the Modes tab from another SS. You might like it while ignoring banjos.
There are three minor scales:
1) pure minor, A to A on the white keys; boring. The Godfather theme uses it.
2) harmonic minor, very often used in Baroque music; raised 7th but normal 6th. This is more used for chords than melodies: Am, Dm, E7 (with G♯)
3) melodic minor: raised 6th and 7th ascending, ordinary 6th and 7th descending. Also Baroque.
A B C D E F♯ G♯ A G♮ F♮ E D C B A
Dorian minor is commonly used in old-time music and is the one I'm mostly familiar with. They taught natural (relative) minor in elementary school music class back in the day. I don't know if the even teach it there any more.
I do hope you know about Bela Fleck
My intro to Fleck:
https://www.amazon.com/New-Acoustic-Music-Various-Artists/dp/B000008IW0/ref=sr_1_1
A great collection of original music
I do. His ability is orders of magnitude beyond anything I have hope of attaining.
This trip to Africa documentary is worth your time if you've never watched it. https://youtu.be/sJt6jn0xT8A
I really like his collaborations with his clawhammer banjo playing wife Abigail Washburn. They make it work well. https://www.belafleck.com/collaborations/bela-fleck-abigail-washburn